


A Worn and Eternal Thing

by icarus_chained



Category: The Last Unicorn - All Media Types, The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Death, F/M, Future Fic, Immortality, Loss, Love, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Old Age, Prompt Fic, Regret, Remembrance, Unicorns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-11
Updated: 2013-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-26 07:50:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/963428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set at the end of <a href="http://www.peterbeagle.com/works/shorts/two_hearts.htm">Two Hearts</a>, the sequel short story to <i>Last Unicorn</i>. The unicorn says goodbye to Lír.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Worn and Eternal Thing

He had not looked like his father. Though age had whitened his hair, gnarled his hands until they could barely hold a sword, still Lír did not look as Haggard had, all those years ago. 

He had no reason to, she supposed. Son or not, Lír had never been truly of Haggard's blood, nor of his nature. There was no reason to think he might have ... have hardened as his father had, no reason to fear he might have grown thin and ferocious and mad as time had passed them both, and altered only him.

But she had feared it. She realised that now. There had been no reason to, but she had feared nonetheless. That time would make him tired and cruel, that the years which could never wear on her would change him beyond recognition, and make from him a mirror of that which had once so terrified her. That the lost happiness that they had held for only brief moments would twist him, as the sight of unicorns had twisted Haggard, and leave him hollow and covetous behind it.

Strange. So strange, to nurse such fear in her immortal breast. To nurse such terror, such sorrow, such _regret_. To be afraid, as none of her kind were afraid. To be weak, as none like her were meant to be weak. An isolating thing, perhaps. Something that made her the first, or the last, or the one alone. The last unicorn. The only unicorn.

The one unicorn in the world, who had known love.

Strange, yes. But stranger still, perhaps, was that she did not ... she did not regret the fear itself. She did not begrudge that thing inside her which had taught it to her, taught her how to regret, how to fear, how to love. She was alone, now, in a way she had never been before. But that, of all things, she did _not_ regret.

He had not looked like his father. Lír, aged and broken at her feet, an old man killed trying to slay monsters. When she had come to him, when she had saved him for only that brief moment before the shadow, he had looked at her as Haggard had never looked at her, as _no-one_ had ever looked at her, and there had been nothing in his eyes but a deep and joyous love. For a frail and lonesome creature with fear in her heart, who had never been meant to know it. Lír had looked at her, even as he lay dying, and he had _loved_.

There could be no regret to encompass that. Though it was love that taught her regret in the first place, though it was love that had cleft her eternal heart in two, she could not regret the thing itself. She could never, not in all the long centuries that lay before her, ever regret that moment, or the light she had seen shining in an old man's eyes.

They faded slowly from her sight. Molly and Schmendrick and the child, Lír's body laid across his horse alongside them, moving slowly through the trees and over the hills away from her. They faded from her, as all mortal things must, and though it was only the frail habit of a strange-worn heart, still she watched them go, until they were out of sight.

She was meant to be unchanging, eternal, unmoved. She was meant to be immortal, as fearless and without regret as only eternity could grant. All these things that a unicorn was meant to be, and that she was no longer. 

But love might wear where even time did not. And the heart, for all its pain, might not regret it.

"I will remember," she whispered, to the shade of the man who had loved her even to his last breath, and had so possessed her, in a way his father, for all his power and his madness, had not. A man who had not hardened as he aged, who had not hollowed, but had loved instead, deep enough for joy as he lay dying. Deep enough to win, perhaps, a kind of immortality. A frail kind, as deep only as a cloven heart could bear, but bright. Bright enough to shine in the eyes and the heart of a lonesome thing.

"Lír," the unicorn said. "My love. I will remember you."


End file.
